EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (216 SP) Superclocked Edition Review

Temperature Testing

Temperatures are not anything we weren’t expecting considering the fact that the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 is overclocked but what really needs to be looked at is its temperature versus the ATI cards. Without a doubt, the quality of the stock Nvidia heatsink becomes abundantly apparent when compared to what ATI uses on supposedly more efficient cards.

Acoustical Properties

Coupled with quite good temperatures, this card did not noticeably ramp up its fan speed throughout testing so it did not become overly loud at all. This is quite unlike the GTX 280 cards we have tested in the past whose fan speed profile was more akin to a Dust Buster than a graphics card. There were the occasional “blip” now and then when the fan did increase for a short period of time but it was not enough for the sound to carry above the rest of the fans in the case.

Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.


Like any card that is overclocked, this one consumes a bit more power than its stock clocked version which was to be expected. Lately, we have heaped praise on Nvidia for tightly controlling their idle power consumption and this card is no different. When under load it will take a good 600W power supply to keep it going, it is still amazing to see this card beating a 55nm HD 4870 when it comes to idle power consumption.